“The worldview that underlay the New Testament was so different from that of the Greeks and the Romans as to be almost its opposite. It was a worldview that stressed not excellence of public achievement but the adventure of a personal journey with God, a lifetime journey in which a human being was invited to unite himself to God by imitating God’s justice and mercy. It was far more individualized than anything the Greeks had ever come up with and stressed the experience of a call, a personal vocation, a unique destiny for each human being. The one God of the Jews had created the world and everyone in it, and God would bring the world to its end. There was no eternal cosmos, circling round and round. Time is real, not cyclical; it does not repeat itself but proceeds forward inexorably, which makes each moment—and the decisions I make each moment—precious. I am not merely an instance of Man, I am this particular, unrepeatable man, who never existed before and will never exist again. I create a real future in the present by what I do now. Whereas fate was central to Greeks and Romans, hope is central to Jews and Christians. Anyone who doubts the great gulf between these two worldviews has only to reread the speeches Hector makes to Andromache (in Chapter I) and to realize the impossibility of putting such speeches on the lips of any believing Jew or Christian:

And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it,
neither brave man nor coward, I tell you—
it’s born with us the day that we are born.”

Any loyal visitor to this blog will be aware that much of my reading over the past year has orbited around the intersection of Athens and Jerusalem. Fideism, which has been the most compelling idea I have encountered in that time, explicitly locates itself in the murky terrain between — or above — faith and reason. I’ve not forgotten that I’m past deadline on some paragraphs about this subject and the other central themes of the past year, and I can only excuse my laziness by saying that part of my distraction has come in the form of Cahill’s incredible book.

I find this particular section pretty intriguing, and though I’ve been mulling it over for the past few days, am not exactly sure what to make of it. In the context of Cahill’s entire narrative it takes on some added shadows and contours, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll merely supplement it with a selection from Arthur Schlesinger’s biography of Robert Kennedy, in which he writes the following about Robert’s spiritual response to his brother’s death:

As John Kennedy’s sense of the Greeks was colored by his own innate joy in existence, Robert’s was directed by an abiding melancholy…

The fact that [Robert] found primary solace in Greek impressions of character and fate did not make him less faithful a Catholic. Still, at the time of truth, Catholic writers did not give him precisely what he needed. And his tragic sense was, to use Auden’s distinction, Greek rather than Christian—the tragedy of necessity rather than the tragedy of possibility; ‘What a pity it had to be this way,’ rather than, ‘What a pity it was this way when it might have been otherwise.’

Hence, the Greek emphasis on fate, which was the foundation of Robert’s reflexive view of the world, absorbed tragedy as an unavoidable consequence of the unchangeable cards one is dealt in life. On the contrary, the Christian perspective, with its emphasis on hope (and its cousin possibility), assessed negative events with an eye to past decisions and potential future choices: not only could it have been different, but I now can choose how to react.

“Banquets of like-minded friends were called symposia. (The singular, symposium—the Greek original is symposion—means ‘a drinking together,’ that is, a drinking party.)…

There was plenty of tension in Greek life, since the Greeks, however many parties they threw, became as time went on even more bellicose than they had been in Homer’s day. These symposia may have been, as much as anything, occasions to release the pent-up anxieties of a society always at war—’the father of all, the king of all,’ ‘always existing by nature,’ as the Greek philosophers expressed it. Enough wine and one could forget about the war of the moment or, if not forget, reduce its importance at least temporarily. Thus this ditty attributed to Theognis, an early-sixth-century songwriter of airy facility who believed in good breeding, great parties, and lively romance, the Cole Porter of ancient Greece:

Strike the sacred strings and let us drink,
and so disport ourselves ’mid sounding reeds
that our libations gratify the gods—
and who gives a shit about war with the Medes

But as tends to be the case when drunkenness substitutes for thoughtfulness, the hilarity often ended badly… There’s sadness beneath the merriment. It is as if, no matter how much these revelers sing, dance, howl, recite their jokes, and screw one another, a constant, authoritative note of pessimistic pain sounds beyond all their frantic attempts not to hear it. Even Archilochus, a sensational athlete in his time and a master of the revels if ever there was one, cannot deny that none of these nighttime activities makes good sense. In his most thoughtful lines, he seems to remove the mask, denuding himself of his gruff and rollicking persona, and to counsel himself in the clear light of day not to excess but to sobriety—to balance, modesty, and even resignation:

O heart, my heart, no public leaping when you win;
no solitude nor weeping when you fail to prove.
Rejoice at simple things; and be but vexed by sin
and evil slightly. Know the tides through which we move.

The last sentence is quietly ominous. The tides through which we move—the highs and the lows, the peaks and the troughs—tell us repeatedly that nothing lasts… Let us temper our excitement and agitation, whether for the ecstasy of battle or the ecstasy of sex, whether over great achievement or great loss, and admit to ourselves that all things have their moment… If we live according to this sober knowledge, we will live as well as we can.”

O heart, my heart, no public leaping when you win;
no solitude nor weeping when you fail to prove.
Rejoice at simple things; and be but vexed by sin
and evil slightly. Know the tides through which we move.

__________

Words by Archilochus, the celebrated Greek poet who wrote and lived in the seventh century BC.

I just came across these lines in Thomas Cahill’s Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, and though I’ve tried to track them down on the internet, am still yet to find their original source. Send me a message or post a comment if you happen to know.

The above bust is of Archilochus. It is a first or second century AD marble sculpture based on an original dating from the late third century BC.

The ivy crown adorning his head signifies he is a poet, while the berries symbolize the gifts of Dionysus. Art historians believe this to be Archilochus due to the similarities it shares with four other Roman copies as well as a silver coin from Paros, which shows the poet seated, holding a lyre. Though he began his adult life as a mercenary, Archilochus eventually became one of the most famous lyric poets of Antiquity. His poems, of which only fragments of remnants remain, principally concern love, war, and the revelries of the table.

Sometime this weekend I’ll post the context in which Cahill quotes this verse. It’s pretty unexpected. Pick up the book here if you can’t wait.

*Update: This morning, reader Ted Rey responded to my question and found the source of the above quote from Archilochus. Ted writes:

“It seems to be an alternate translation for Fragment 67, as translated by R. Lattimore

Heart, my heart, so battered with misfortune far beyond your strength,
up, and face the men who hate us. Bare your chest to the assault
of the enemy, and fight them off. Stand fast among the beamlike spears.
Give no ground; and if you beat them, do not brag in open show,
nor, if they beat you, run home and lie down on your bed and cry.
Keep some measure in the joy you take in luck, and the degree you
give way to sorrow. All our life is up-and-down like this.

The war motif has been bypassed. I like the more generalized message that emerges.

Another translation is:

Soul, my soul, don’t let them break you,
all these troubles. Never yield:
though their force is overwhelming,
up! attack them shield to shield…

Take the joy and bear the sorrow,
looking past your hopes and fears:
learn to recognize the measured
dance that orders all our years.

Archilochus: To His Soul : A Fragment, as translated from the Greek by Jon Corelis”